Friday, February 27, 2015

It has been a week filled with ludicrous, over the top fear mongering as the clock ticks down on fully funding the Department of Homeland Security. First it was the alleged terrorist plot to attack the Mall of America, a danger to the public that was pimped across all five Sunday morning McNews shows by DHS boss Jeh Johnson. Then there was yet another busting of domestic ISIS "recruits" who ended up being a few pathetic losers who were entrapped by the Feds. But the granddaddy of them all just happens to conveniently pop up on the day prior to the expiration of funding DHS. Anyone who sees the way that this government operates has to be shaking their heads over the formal identification of Jihadi John, the baddest Muslim motherfucker of them all.

The network and cable TV McNews shows and internet ‘news’ sites are filled to the brim today with tales of the hideous head chopping ISIS Übermensch tabbed as Jihadi John and his henchmen "the Beatles". The Department of Homeland Security could not have possibly asked for a better pitchman to finally close the deal on continued funding for the American Gestapo than the British beheading machine. This may finally be what it takes for Speaker John Boehner to crack and sign onto the trickery of the splitting off Obama's amnesty decree from the DHS funding which is a farce. The entire mainstream media is selling it hard today as though they were starving used car salesmen hustling their asses off in the waning days of the week before Christmas. In a way that is exactly what they are but a pack of whores trying to rake it in the day before the naval fleet leaves their port may be a more apropos metaphor.

The masked "Jihadi John" killer who fronted Islamic State beheading videos has been identified as Mohammed Emwazi, a British computer programming graduate from a well-to-do London family.

The black-clad militant brandishing a knife and speaking with an English accent was shown in videos released by Islamic State (IS) apparently decapitating hostages including Americans, Britons and Syrians.

The 26-year-old militant used the videos to threaten the West, admonish its Arab allies and taunt President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron before petrified hostages cowering in orange jump suits.

Emwazi's name was first disclosed by the Washington Post, citing unidentified former associates, but two U.S. government sources who spoke on condition of anonymity confirmed to Reuters that investigators believed Jihadi John was Emwazi.

Dressed entirely in black, a balaclava covering all but his eyes and the bridge of his nose and a holster under his left arm, Jihadi John became a menacing symbol of Islamic State brutality and one of the world's most wanted men.

Hostages called him John as he and other Britons in Islamic State had been nicknamed the Beatles.

The Washington Post took credit for the journalistic coup of identifying Jihadi John in the piece “‘Jihadi John’: Islamic State killer is identified as Londoner Mohammed Emwazi”. The scoop likely had tens if not hundreds of thousands of people dependent on the Washington centered war on terror industry jumping for joy as the money spigots can’t possibly be turned off while a fiend like him is at large. If you happen to be inclined to do such things go and bet the mortgage money on a renewal of Homeland Security funding before time officially runs out on Friday.

While I don’t at all dismiss the very serious threat of Islamist fanatics with a huge scimitar to grind going on the rampage and plotting to attack America, it is also advantageous for a trillion dollar industry to have an ample supply of bogeymen to trot out whenever the need arises. Like everything else this week the timing and saturation coverage of Jihadi John has a rather pungent smell emanating from it. Kind of like money mixed with bullshit and really, who but a compete sucker can believe anything that comes out of a government that lies about everything as a first resort. The media only serves as it's propaganda arm.

It's the timing that gives it away which shows more than anything how much that the government and the Obama regime have come to see Americans as chumps ripe for the taking.

Saturday, February 21, 2015

Stories of the NSA drive to in the words of retired boss General Keith Alexander “Collect It All”, have lately gone the way of “Deflategate” in the mainstream media but Big Brother never sleeps. We all need to understand that we live in the waning days of having any expectation of privacy and it is only a matter of time until big government is trying to get at what is inside our skulls too. This week there were two major reports of what the secret police have been up to yet the domestic media has largely stayed focused on the political rat race and various and sundry celebrity tales. This failure to engage in serious investigative journalism is exactly why guys like Brian Williams are able to land multi-million dollar jobs as the gatekeepers in the McNews industry.

The story with the most far reaching consequences is the allegation that the NSA and their counterparts across the pond in jolly old England - GCHQ - hacked into the world’s largest provider of SIM cards. Those are those little things inside everyone’s smartphones that allow for the protection of private data when communicating and engaging in financial transactions. Billions of cellphones worldwide could possibly be affected by this massive breach of encryption - maybe even yours.

Digital security company Gemalto NV was hacked by American and British spies to steal encryption keys used to protect the privacy of cellphone communications, news website Intercept reported, citing documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The hack by the National Security Agency (NSA) and UK's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) allowed the agencies to monitor a large portion of voice and data mobile communications around the world without permission from governments and telecom companies, according to the report.

A GCHQ spokesperson said the agency did not comment on intelligence matters. NSA could not be immediately reached for comment.

The hack story was broken by the website The Intercept in a huge expose entitled “The Great SIM Heist: How Spies Stole The Keys To The Encryption Castle” which is a long and detailed piece that is well worth the time spent reading it. Many will of course dismiss this out of hand because the documents about the hacking were provided by former government contractor turned NSA Whistleblower Edward Snowden who is a controversial figure to put it mildly. However, in the days of a rogue government and the Obama regime’s ongoing war on journalists and whistleblowers it takes bold action to expose the scale of government criminality.

The other story, which is easily dismissed because it can simply be denounced as Putin propaganda is that of Russian computer security firm Kaspersky identifying the ability to embed spyware deep inside computer hard drives. According to the Reuters story “Russian researchers expose breakthrough U.S. spying program”:

The U.S. National Security Agency has figured out how to hide spying software deep within hard drives made by Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba and other top manufacturers, giving the agency the means to eavesdrop on the majority of the world's computers, according to cyber researchers and former operatives.

That long-sought and closely guarded ability was part of a cluster of spying programs discovered by Kaspersky Lab, the Moscow-based security software maker that has exposed a series of Western cyberespionage operations.

Kaspersky said it found personal computers in 30 countries infected with one or more of the spying programs, with the most infections seen in Iran, followed by Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, Mali, Syria, Yemen and Algeria. The targets included government and military institutions, telecommunication companies, banks, energy companies, nuclear researchers, media, and Islamic activists, Kaspersky said.

The firm declined to publicly name the country behind the spying campaign, but said it was closely linked to Stuxnet, the NSA-led cyberweapon that was used to attack Iran's uranium enrichment facility. The NSA is the agency responsible for gathering electronic intelligence on behalf of the United States.

A former NSA employee told Reuters that Kaspersky's analysis was correct, and that people still in the intelligence agency valued these spying programs as highly as Stuxnet. Another former intelligence operative confirmed that the NSA had developed the prized technique of concealing spyware in hard drives, but said he did not know which spy efforts relied on it.

NSA spokeswoman Vanee Vines declined to comment.

These stories are perfect examples of how the surveillance industrial complex has run amok and will continue to do so until lawmakers do their jobs. Our elected 'representatives' should subject the NSA to the type of rigorous oversight needed to prevent the ongoing digital rampage. The spooks and data vampires whose activities are funded by U.S. taxpayer dollars are not only gutting the Constitution but doing immense and irreparable damage to American tech businesses, especially in the new era of cloud computing.

Silicon Valley high-rollers understand this too and have been highly critical of the potential financial damage to their industries and have taken their concerns directly to Emperor Barack Obama himself. But Obama is a defender of the status quo and there will be no effort to reign in the data grabbers and snoopers on his watch. Don't look for it from Jeb Bush either if he is the next one to sit on the throne, especially since he just defended his brother's mass surveillance programs that "keep us safe".

One day Americans will be made to face the consequences of their complicity in allowing the wolves to be the ones charged with guarding the hen house and that day is rapidly approaching.

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

With Americans’ political choices in the 2016 presidential race having pretty much already been made for them – Bush III or Clinton II – it is now up to the candidates to craft their sales pitches. While neither one will differ drastically from the other in terms of endless foreign entanglements, banker bailouts, mass surveillance, the war on civil liberties and amnesty for illegals it is all a matter of packaging. While Hillary lays low in the weeds - a luxury in that she has no competition from other Democrats – Jeb is going to have to actually go out and hit the cornbread and rubber chicken circuit to sell his policies.

The United States needs to regain its leadership role in the world, Republican Jeb Bush will say in a speech on Wednesday, while asserting that President Barack Obama has been inconsistent and indecisive in carrying out American foreign policy.

Bush's speech at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs will be his first major foray into foreign policy since he announced in December that he is considering a run for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination.

“The great irony of the Obama presidency is this: Someone who came to office promising greater engagement with the world has left America less influential in the world,” Bush will say, according to speech excerpts that were provided to Reuters.

The former Florida governor is casting a wide net for advice on national security. An aide provided to Reuters a diverse list of 20 diplomatic and national security veterans who will be providing informal advice to Bush in the coming months.

Many of them are from past Republican administrations, including those of his father and brother, former presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, as well as that of Ronald Reagan.

This doesn’t bode well for the financial prospects of Americans in that counter to the post-World War II conventional wisdom that war is good for the economy it only applies to the connected insiders. The gravy train will be running at full speed under Bush III and the key will be selling a “stronger America” to an electorate that if it understands nothing else it understands that Obama’s foreign policy has been an aimless and ineffective mess. But what can you expect when you bring in John “Skull and Bones” Kerry, Susan Rice and Samantha Power as your heavy hitters. The Bush collection of neocons can be called many things but incompetent is not among them.

This is not a good thing for average Americans and with Jeb already staking out a very muscular foreign policy vision it will be incumbent upon Hillary – no shrinking violet – to present an even more bellicose vision of a “stronger America”. None of this hogwash about American having a “stronger role” in the world does one damned thing to address the very serious problems in The Homeland. The reality is that America is now a land of a rigged financial system that is unable to function without government backstopping, ever increasing mass surveillance, diminishing civil liberties, crumbling infrastructure, lousy jobs (thanks to offshoring and importing illegal aliens) and dismal hopes for future generations.

Neither Jeb Bush nor Hillary Clinton represent anything short of a strengthening of a status quo grown fat and powerful off of cashing in on the never ending Global War on Terror (GWOT). In a true and functional democracy – we no longer live in one – voters would have a choice that offers more difference than a taste test between Coke and Pepsi.

Monday, February 16, 2015

Disgraced NBC News anchorman Brian Williams has been pilloried nonstop over his embarrassing and possibly career killing series of lies but at least one big name celebrity has his back. The unstable, Coke shorting, tiger blood drinking, porn star banging, rehab hoppingmadman Charlie Sheen has come out in defense of his “hero”. It is a sign of just how truly tough that times are for Williams when a guy like Sheen and all of his scandal drenched baggage is his most prominent advocate.

It looks like Brian Williams has at least one person still behind him.

Charlie Sheen proved to be a big fan of the NBC anchor who was suspended Tuesday night without pay for six months.

Sheen took to Twitter and tweeted, what seems to be some sort of letter in poem form beginning with, "Dear Mr. Williams."

His tweet, which he had to use the app "TwitLonger" because of its length, thanked the "Nightly News" anchor for his "24 years of inimitable professionalism and top shelf brilliance, as a stone cold passion drive and perfectly fact based journalist."

"You good sir, are a hero in my "Entire Library," the actor added.

Maybe the strangest part of the tweet was when he called Williams a "victim of a transparent and vile witch hunt."

At the end of the message to the host he offered his protection "if you need it."

"I remain humbly and on dangerous standby at your service," he added.

Possibly the former "Two and a Half Men" actor feels he can relate to Williams after he too was sacked from the CBS sitcom in 2011.

On camera, Williams was preternaturally gifted, cutting a handsome figure with a serious but easygoing manner. His prominent chin skewed slightly to his left, giving his face a kind of permanent complexity and expressiveness. He could play it straight delivering the news in a rich baritone. He could stick to the facts.

Tom Bettag, a veteran producer who worked with Williams on the short-lived news magazine “Rock Center With Brian Williams” and has held top positions at all of the major networks, called him one of the “most meticulous anchors” in the business.

“His insistence on fact-checking approached being a pain in the butt,” Bettag said. “That side of Brian is largely being lost as he faces what I consider to be an appropriate punishment.”

But when Williams was talking about himself outside the confines of his anchor’s desk, he seemed to want to make his experiences more dramatic, colleagues said. He was the biggest news anchor in the country, the undisputed ratings champ, but he often pushed stories to their limit — and sometimes beyond.

“That’s Brian being Brian” became the newsroom shorthand.

“Brian’s not a liar,” said an “NBC Nightly News” journalist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because network management has strongly discouraged staffers from speaking publicly about Williams. “He’s a guy who gets caught up in the story. He’s a great storyteller. But sometimes storytellers embellish. But you don’t embellish about getting hit by an RPG.”

You just have to love the “Brian’s not a liar” quote that attempts to downplay Williams’ fibbing and the massive breach of trust with the public. It’s like Slick Willie wagging that finger and claiming that “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” and we all know how that turned out. I realize that the American language has taken some pretty severe hits in the Orwellian wasteland of the post 9/11 era but a lie not being a lie is right up there with 2+2 = 5.

So as he sweats out his six month suspension while Comcast/NBC executives drool over the prospect of landing Jon Stewart as his replacement, Williams may be so toxic that he will only be left with Charlie Sheen in his corner. It's like a perverse modern Greek tragedy.

It is an American story that serves as a brilliant example of how poorly served that the public has been by the merger of the news with the cult of celebrity.

Sunday, February 15, 2015

Despite the fragile ceasefire that emerged from the peace talks between leaders of Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine there is still an ongoing push by defense industry pimps to supply weapons to Kiev backed forces. The top two proponents – as well as the most noisy – are of course the dynamic duo of John McCain and Lindsey Graham which comes as no surprise. Since it is Sunday at least one them will be appearing on the morning propaganda shows today to howl for pissing away American tax dollars in a civil war that we have no business meddling in. Neither one of the two - who have never met a foreign conflict that they would not send Americans off to die for - has ever done anything remotely as shameless as what Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe just did.

Inhofe, who sits elbow to elbow with McCain and Graham on the Senate Armed Services Committee has been doing his damned level best to poke the nuclear armed bear. This gaggle, and a multitude of supporting propagandists, State Department figures and Obama administration hacks seem to believe that it is in the best interests of America to get into a proxy war halfway across the planet over events in Ukraine. We can’t even secure our own freaking borders and it is largely thanks to the likes of Inhofe and his ilk who only seem to be interested in waging Cold War era ideological battles and shilling for the defense industrial complex.

Members of the Senate Armed Services Committee first viewed the graphic pictures in December. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R., Okla.) then obtained the photos and worked to independently verify and confirm the authenticity of the photos, before providing them exclusively to the Free Beacon.

Inhofe said he hopes the images act as a wake up call to the Obama administration and American people, who largely have been spared from seeing the graphic violence inflicted upon Ukraine by the Russian-backed separatists…

Following publication of this story, serious questions have been raised about the authenticity of some of the photographs provided by Sen. Jim Inhofe (R., Okla.). Several images of the Russian convoys appear to have been taken in 2008, during Russia’s conflict with Georgia. Given the similarities between the earlier images and those provided by the senator’s office, the Washington Free Beacon is investigating further and will update as necessary.

The providing of the pics to the Washington Free Beacon is a tried and true tactic for the establishment propaganda machine. First a fake story is put out by a lesser known website and then breathlessly hyped until one of the mainstream McNews outlets picks it up and then it becomes a talking point. Call me a cynic but it would be very advantageous to have "proof" of a massive Russian invasion that could be cited by McCain on Meet the Press. Inhofe is frantically backing away from the photos now and blaming the whole mess on the members of parliament in Kiev who provided him with the material.

Washington Free Beacon published a story Thursday that included several photographs offered to the publication exclusively by Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.). Well, “exclusive” was a bit of a stretch. Both the publication and the senator soon learned that at least one of the gruesome pictures came from the AP in 2008. Two others were easily spotted elsewhere online.

Washington Free Beacon walked back its story with a severe update as well as a second update up top.

Inhofe issued a statement late Thursday saying he was furious. But he claimed one falsified photo doesn’t change the gist of the story, which is that pro-Russia separatists have been murdering Ukranians and the U.S. government, in his view, needs to step in and militarily aid the Ukraine.

“The Ukrainian parliament members who gave us these photos in print form as if it came directly from a camera really did themselves a disservice,” Inhofe said in a statement sent to The Mirror by his office. “We felt confident to release these photos because the images match the reporting of what is going on in the region. I was furious to learn one of the photos provided now appears to be falsified from an AP photo taken in 2008. This doesn’t change the fact that there is plenty of evidence Russia has made advances into the country with T-72 tanks and that pro-Russian separatists have been killing Ukrainians in cold blood.”

But lying comes as naturally to a member of congress as breathing water does to a fish and the corrupt media never calls any of these swine out for their bullshit. Inhofe can huff and puff and blame it all on being suckered but it rings hollow because he is not walking back his statements on a Russian invasion of Ukraine one bit. This line of hogwash has been invoked so often over the past year that one wonders why Putin himself isn't already sitting behind Petro "the Chocolate King" Poroshenko's desk and sipping his aged cognac from a snifter.

I don't buy it that Inhofe didn't know that the pictures were a hoax but even if he was duped would that make you feel any better as to the level of competence of our government? And this is Russia that these morons are provoking not some dipshit Middle East hellhole that doesn't possess a huge nuclear arsenal which makes Inhofe's actions recklessly stupid.

Looks like Brian Williams may just have a career in politics after all.

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